


Belonging

by HollowIsTheWorld



Series: Laurina Lavellan; Herald of Andraste (except for not) [1]
Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-23
Updated: 2015-10-23
Packaged: 2018-04-27 15:59:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,039
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5054929
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HollowIsTheWorld/pseuds/HollowIsTheWorld
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Laurina likes the stables. It isn't home, not by a long shot, but sometimes it's close enough.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Belonging

**Author's Note:**

> First installment in what I imagine will end up being a fairly substantial series of one-shots about my Inquisitor Lavellan. If you have any questions, prompts, etc. you should totally come hit me up on my tumblr, hollowistheworld.tumblr.com (because I'm clearly original with user names).

Laurina likes the stables.

  
Being Inquisitor isn’t something she ever asked for, ever wanted. She wanted - still wants - her clan, her friends, her culture. She wants the relative isolation of wandering forests and plains, the simplicity of eating what they find or hunt. She wants the halla, the aravels, the easy switch between the common tongue and the elven language.  
She can’t have any of that. But sometimes the stables are close enough.

  
She usually smiles a greeting at Blackwall as she passes the barn, and he’ll smile back and nod before returning to the his carvings. She’ll nod a polite acknowledgment to Dennet and he’ll nod back, respectfully.

  
But she doesn’t stop to talk. It’s good, she supposes, that Blackwall isn’t much of a talker himself. They are content to leave each other in peace, to parse out whatever parts of their own heads they need to. He carves and whittles and sands, and she leans across the stable doors to pat the Inquisition’s mounts.

  
Some days, when she can, when the whole world doesn’t seem to need her immediate attention, she’ll spend all day out there. It confused Dennet and his men the first few times, seeing the Inquisitor, Herald of Andraste, brushing down horses and mucking out stalls, but they’ve all accepted it now. She doesn’t know what they think of it, and she doesn’t much care. She likes it. It’s simple, and it feels just a tiny bit like being somewhere she fits.

  
She likes the harts best, of course. They remind her of home. She’ll brush them down, carefully, and she knows Dennet appreciates it, because a hart isn’t exactly what he signed on to take care of. She runs her fingers across their antlers, and speak elvish at them, because sometimes, secretly, there’s something gnawing at her insides, telling her she’ll forget what little of her language she knows if she’s not careful. She speaks it with Solas sometimes too, but on days like these she likes that the harts don’t talk back.  
The Royal Sixteen is her favorite, the gift from her clan. She sits with it, telling it stories of old hunts she’d been on with Lunalla and Trystan, of places the clan had camped that she wants to return to.

  
The bog unicorn is fascinating. Solas and Cole are both fascinated with the creature. It’s weird and different and doesn’t really look like it belongs. Laurina can appreciate that. She tries to pay it a little extra attention, since Dennet and his men always look like they might faint if they get too close to it. Cole says it appreciates it. She assumes he’d know.

  
“You and I aren’t all that different, you know?” she says to it one day, running a brush down its side. She’s not sure it _needs_ to be brushed, but she imagines that the part of it that remembers being a normal horse probably likes it. It’s never tried to stop her, at any rate. “Neither of us really fit in.”

  
She looks over at the other horses, which always keep a careful distance if they’re out of the barn; the way dogs shy away from snakes. “See? They don’t understand you, so you’re evil.” She looks over her shoulder in the other direction. The people always crowded around the market stalls seem to think she can’t hear them, muttering about knife-ears and how they hope they won’t have to work with any elves. As though they aren’t working for one.

  
She pats the bog unicorn’s shoulder and it makes a wickering noise that almost sounds normal. “Stupid shems. I told the Keeper they weren’t worth our time, before she sent me to that stupid conclave.” She keeps her voice low. Nobody’s near, but it wouldn’t do to have one of Dennet’s or Leliana’s people overhear. “Think they’re so great…” She sighs and throws one arm over the horse’s shoulders. She looks at the sword skewered through it’s head.

  
“Dennet says he thinks your owner did that to you. Act of mercy.” If the animal understands, it gives no indication of it. Laurina sighs. “Nice of him, if it’s true. I guess. He must have really liked you. He let you keep the sword. Bull wants to know if we can train you to skewer people on that thing, by the way.”

  
The bog unicorn nudges her shoulder with its nose, like it wants a treat. Laurina has some apples, but she and the bog unicorn established early on that it didn’t actually care for eating anymore.

  
“I’m not sure either of us really belong here,” she confides. “I mean, I know you want to help, but besides Solas, Cole, and I, no one comes near you. And I…” She heaves a sigh and leans back until her back’s against the wall. The bog unicorn turns it’s head to watch her.

  
“I don’t belong here,” she tells it, so quietly she’s not sure even she can hear it, let alone the animal in the stall with her. It paws one hoof at the ground.

  
She stays there for an hour or two, until the weather cools off enough for her to think about going inside. She stands up, dusts the straw off her clothes, and pats the bog unicorn goodbye.

  
She hands out the apples she’d brought with her; mostly to the harts, who never seem to get enough attention. She pats the noses of whichever animals have their heads poked over their stall doors, including a few of the dracolisks. The unusual mounts aren’t usually fond of affection, but Laurina’s always happy to give it if they ask.

  
She slips through the kitchens as she goes to her room, and manages to only wince a little when she hears someone refer to one of the servants as being ‘one of _them_ ’. She’ll have to talk to Josephine. She’s weary of fighting on her own behalf, but she’s made a promise to every elf inside Skyhold’s walls that at the very least she’ll protect them from the knife-ear insults. They don’t belong here, the humans like to make sure they know that.

  
They _are_ here though, and Laurina’s determined to make that count for something.


End file.
